Soft Computing Evaluation Logic

4.3Evaluation of Medical Conditions¹

In this chapter we present quantitative models for evaluation of disease severity and patient disability using the LSP method. The basic idea is that the LSP method can be used to evaluate medical conditions using general medical criteria, and to customize them according to needs of a specific patient. Such LSP criteria (first introduced in [DUJ08a]) can be implemented using software tools available over the Internet and used by both patients and doctors. Such tools are suitable for analyzing changes of patient condition over a period of time and making decisions related to selection of therapy.

The goal of this chapter is to discuss the following topics:

• Quantification of disease severity and patient disability
• Benefits of replacing medical rating scales with LSP criteria
• Development of LSP criteria for patient disability evaluation
• The decision problem of the best time to start a risky therapy
• Development of the LSPmed software tool for medical applications
• Case study of using LSP method in a real case of peripheral neuropathy

LSP models can incorporate both subjective symptoms and objectively measured impairments, can be used by both doctors and patients to quantitatively evaluate the current level of severity or disability, and can be serially applied to analyze the progression of disease over time and the response to therapy. The presented method is generally applicable to all medical evaluations where it is important to create precise ...